Marion Ross

Marion Ross was murdered in her house in Irvine Road, Kilmarnock. She had been stabbed to death.

Her ribs had been crushed and she had been stabbed in the eye and throat with a pair of scissors. The scissors were found embedded in her throat.

A man was convicted of her murder in 1997 but his conviction was later quashed in August 2002. He was convicted on the basis that a biscuit tin that was found at his house had a mark on it which was identified as Marion Ross's fingerprint. However, at his appeal it was determined that the mark was not Marion Ross's fingerprint. He had been released on interim liberation in 2000 pending a full hearing of his appeal after other fingerprint evidence in the case was discredited.

His appeal was allowed after it was found that a fingerprint found in Marion Ross's home which was claimed to be that of a policewoman who had never been in Marion Ross's house was found to be clearly not hers, which resulted in the integrity of the identification of the fingerprint on the biscuit tin being brought under doubt.

It was heard that during the investigation a fingerprint belonging to one of the policewomen who had been called out to the murder scene, but who said she had not gone inside, was found in Marion Ross's home on some woodwork in the bathroom. The policewoman denied that the fingerprint was hers and as a result of her denial, which was considered to constitute lying under oath in court, she stood trial for perjury in 1999. However, she managed to get some experts from the United States who had worked for the FBI, who she found through the internet, to examine the fingerprint who concluded that the fingerprint was not hers, stating that the differences were obvious and took only a matter of seconds to see. The policewoman was later awarded £750,000 in compensation. The police later apologised to the policewoman in 2011 after a formal enquiry concluded that the fingerprint was not hers.

Friends of Marion Ross said that the issue over the fingerprints made a mockery of Marion Ross's memory.

The man that was initially convicted said that the biscuit tin found at his house which contained £1,400 had been his and that it had contained his life savings.

It was later reported that the police had also identified another man as a suspect who was said to have been a local criminal who had since been convicted with another man of suffocating another elderly lady in Galston, Ayrshire in 2003. Galston was noted as being six miles away from Kilmarnock where Marion Ross lived.

Marion Ross was a spinster and a former bank clerk.